Zion Hill First Baptist Church
Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Rev. Lawson Reed organized this black Baptist congregation in 1879 and led the first worship services under a brush arbor. This structure, erected in 1914 on land purchased from John Schmidt, was the third church building occupied by the membership. Designed by the noted German-born architect Dietrich Antone Wilhelm Rulfs (1848-1926), it combines Victorian styling with Gothic Revival detailing. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1977
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Rev. Lawson Reed gathered this Black Baptist congregation in 1879, holding the first services in the open air beneath a brush arbor in the years after emancipation. By 1914 the growing membership raised its third home, a handsome brick church that blended Victorian styling with Gothic Revival detail. It was designed by Diedrich Rulfs, the German-born architect who shaped much of Nacogdoches's built landscape — a notable commission for a church founded by freedpeople.
Why it matters
Zion Hill reflects how African American communities built enduring institutions of faith and self-determination in the decades after slavery, leaving landmarks that anchor their neighborhoods today.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the Rev. Lawson Reed gathered this congregation in 1879, emancipation was less than a generation old. In East Texas, as across the South, formerly enslaved people and their children were building the institutions of free life almost from scratch: families made legal, schools, benevolent societies and, above all, churches.
Reconstruction had ended by the late 1870s, and Black Texans faced a hardening world of economic hardship and growing segregation. Independent Black churches became the most important institutions African Americans fully controlled. They were places of worship, but also meeting halls, schools, relief networks and training grounds for community leaders.
Nacogdoches, one of Texas's oldest towns, was changing too. As the town grew and prospered toward the turn of the century, it built new commercial buildings, homes and churches. That construction brought skilled builders and architects into its orbit.
People & events
The congregation began humbly. Under Rev. Reed, the first services were held beneath a brush arbor, a simple open-air shelter of poles roofed with branches. Brush arbors were a familiar part of Black religious life in the South, and they carried special meaning: under slavery, worship out of sight of enslaved people's owners had often taken place in just such improvised outdoor spaces.
The membership did not stay under the branches. Over the next few decades the congregation moved through two earlier buildings. In 1914 it raised this one, its third home, on land bought from John Schmidt. Buying land and building on it was a real achievement for a congregation of limited means, and it signaled that the community meant to stay.
For the design, the church turned to Diedrich Rulfs, a German-born architect whose work shaped much of Nacogdoches. His church for Zion Hill combines Victorian styling with Gothic Revival details, pointed forms that reach upward and give the building quiet dignity. A congregation founded by freedpeople chose one of the town's best-known designers, and the result has endured for more than a century.
Its place in the American story
Zion Hill tells in miniature one of the most important stories of the post–Civil War United States: how African Americans turned freedom into lasting community. Across the South, Black Baptist and Methodist congregations multiplied after emancipation. Many followed the same path, from brush arbor to modest frame church to a permanent building.
Those churches mattered far beyond Sunday mornings. They produced ministers, teachers and civic leaders, and they preserved community memory through the long years of segregation. Generations later, many became organizing centers when the struggle for civil rights took shape.
The building also reflects the cultural mix of Texas. A German immigrant architect designed a sanctuary for a Black congregation in one of the state's oldest towns. The result shows how different streams of 19th-century migration and freedom came together in the American South.
If you visit
Take in the church from the outside first. Look for the Gothic Revival touches, the pointed shapes and vertical lines that draw the eye upward, set against the more decorative Victorian character of the design. It is a building meant to look permanent and proud, and it does.
Remember that this is a living house of worship, not a museum. Be respectful of services and church activities, and admire the architecture from public ground unless you are welcomed in.
Nacogdoches is a rewarding stop on any East Texas drive, with a deep layer of history and a good number of historic buildings. Architecture fans may enjoy looking for Rulfs's other work around town. Zion Hill adds an essential chapter to that tour: the story of the community that built it for itself.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Lawson Reed
- · Diedrich Rulfs
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Oak Grove Cemetery
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Once called the "American Cemetery," Oak Grove sits on land granted in 1826 to empresario Haden Edwards, leader of the Fredonian Rebellion, who is buried here. Its graves read like a roster of the Texas Republic: signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, veterans of San Jacinto, Sam Houston's secretary of war and personal physician, early millionaires, a master architect, and formerly enslaved men and women. Burials relocated from an older Spanish cemetery reach back to a stone marked "Father Mendoza, 1718."
Zion Hill Baptist Church Cemetery
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When Rev. Lawson Reed reached Nacogdoches in 1878, he found no organized Baptist church for the Black community, so in 1879 charter members began worshiping under a brush arbor before the Walton family donated land. The cemetery's earliest marked grave dates to 1897, and among those laid to rest are Reed himself, members of fraternal orders, and Jim Smith, a World War I veteran. After falling into disrepair, the ground was taken up for care by the city in the 1970s.
William ("Bill") Goyens
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E. J. Campbell School
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Opened in 1903 as the Nacogdoches Colored School and renamed in 1937 for longtime principal E. J. Campbell, this school served African American students from the town and surrounding countryside under Texas's 'separate but equal' segregation laws, which in practice left Black schools underfunded. Beginning under Campbell, students regularly visited Prairie View Normal School to glimpse the possibilities of higher education, and the results were remarkable: at one point more than two-thirds of graduates went on to college, many returning as certified teachers. The school served its community until Nacogdoches fully integrated in 1970.